As we approach the tail end of this year’s MILANTRACE project in partnership with Living Edge, I wanted to share a little video, giving you a personal insight into our crazy week during Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week – a little behind the scenes insight into the making of #MILANTRACE2019, and what our little team gets up to on the ground.

As always, it’s been a super busy year for our team in realising this very ambitious project. You’d think we’d learn from the previous years, but the problem is there is simply too much to do in a short space of time, and the more our team grows, the better we try to make the report/ the talks/ the whole thing.

And to be perfectly frank – every single year I question my sanity and why we continue to do this project. While on the outside it looks like nothing but bags of fun, and some of the times it is, the reality of producing MILANTRACE is seriously brutal. This project demands an extraordinary amount of work and commitment. From carefully devising our itinerary for weeks in advance so each moment in Milan is maximised with exacting precision; balancing commercial realities with a continuous desire to get off the beaten path to discover the unknown and underexposed; staying on the ball during the entire week and pushing through the massive days, jetlag, exhaustion, and this year for me – the added pressure of dealing with some pretty ordinary pregnancy symptoms (yeah, that’s not just extra pasta around my mid-section, I’m growing a little human in my belly – yay!); organising appointments; collecting and managing all the press kits; choosing and analysing content, going through thousands of photos and many, many hours of video footage; editing, editing, editing, questioning, refining and editing some more, in order to distil the essence of the largest design event known to man into 90-minute-talk, website and social content and our Digital Report. This process brings me to my knees every single year – I fry my brain, my eyes, all of my senses – I lose sleep, I get irritated, I cry – sometimes from the stress, other times because I’m incredibly frustrated as I proceed to declare: “We are NEVER doing this shit again!”

And when we start to pull it all together – Nick’s amazing photos come to life, Giacomo’s immersive videos with fantastic music start to brand the year with their sounds, we delve deeper into some of the stories and remember all the people we’ve met during the week and ultimately why we do what we do – then I cry because I feel guilty for ever questioning this project – because MILANTRACE is not about me and what I want, how much it sucks to push ourselves to the breaking point every time, or how little sleep we get for about 3 months. It’s about the stories that need to be told and that must be shared – the extraordinary effort and talent that deserves to be celebrated in all its glory and that we ultimately get to share with you all.

Anyway! Thank you to your amazing feedback for this project– we are so overwhelmed by everyone’s continued support, and I feel so proud to have so many extraordinary people in attendance at our events across the country year after year, as well as you guys – our dearest readers.

For all of you who couldn’t make it along to one of our events, there is always our kick arse Milantrace Digital Report, which we will release for sale in the first week of June. Stay tuned for more soon, and in the meantime – I hope you enjoy this little segment.

Always,
Mama Yellowtrace x